BRAVELIVER: A Bipolar Guide To Working In Seattle

By Jay Craig

Braveliver is a guide to living and working with bipolar disorder, or manic depression. The author provides practical everyday advice that is a result of decades of living with the condition.

It is also a celebration of Elmer Fisher, the (most certainly) bipolar architect who rebuilt Seattle after the Great Fire of 1889 and la

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay Craig
• Release date: Feb 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798218146429

Jay Craig

Jay Craig lives in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. He has done a variety of work over the years, from owning a boat building business, to running a kilt factory, to writing trivia questions, to working in a senior living facility.

Book preview

The beginning of the pandemic marked the end of my career as Captain Braveliver. Since then I have been constantly looking for my Last Great Job that, with any luck, I will get before I’m too old to work.

Being a Duck Captain was perfect for me because it gave me both a creative outlet to satisfy my manic energy and a lively atmosphere surrounded by fun people that helped stave off depression. Losing that job wasn’t just a bummer, it was also kinda scary. People with bipolar disorder have a lower life expectancy than others and I wasn’t sure I had the energy or the will to survive what might be coming. 

So I hunkered down and bought an old Uhaul to convert into a tiny house to cut my expenses. And I’ve learned a couple things about managing my manic depression and while not everything is applicable to everybody, it may be more helpful than some book written by a PHD who only knows what crazy people like us tell them. There are many medications out there (some of which are useful, I take lithium, myself) but the fact that I’ve never had psychiatrists agree on which meds I should be on just tells me that nobody really knows what the hell is going on and the bipolar person is mostly on their own to figure it all out.  

But there is one thing that will always be a constant in my life and that is work. Living with bipolar disorder requires hard work, each and every day. There is no Happy Retirement from being bipolar, it is something you will work on the rest of your life.

Shower, Bed, Dishes

I do three things everyday, no matter what- I take a shower, I make my bed first thing in the morning, and I make sure there are no dirty dishes in the sink when I go to bed.  

Doing these three things won’t stave off depression but they will lessen it. I don’t debate whether or not I’m gonna take a shower, I just do it. I don’t ever have a sink full of dirty pans and dishes because I clean things as I go and I learned long ago not to have any extra utensils or glassware, anyway. And there’s a reason the military makes their recruits make their beds first thing in the morning- it gives them a sense of accomplishment and provides a sense of order so that no matter what happens during the day they come back to a made bed. 

There are other methods of dealing with bipolar disorder, of course, but these three things-

Take a Shower 

Make the Bed

Do the Dishes

  when done EVERYDAY, will help reduce your depressive episodes.

There are many other things I’ve learned I need to do to shorten and minimize my manic and depressive episodes but no matter what state of mind I’m in or where I find myself, I start the day with a sense of order and no stink of depression. 

Shower. Bed. Dishes.

Building Seattle

When Seattle was ravaged by the Great Fire of 1889, it made news all over the country. People were stunned by the photos of the devastation to this little lumber town they’d never heard of, somewhere in the upper left hand corner of the country. 

Seattle was beginning to prosper, thanks in large part to the lumber industry, and was ready to seize the opportunity to rebuild the city properly. Their new buildings would be fire resistant and, to solve the problem of having built the initial city on a tidal flat that flooded out twice a day, they would raise the streets and the first floors of Pioneer Square ten to twenty feet.

Just a year later, people across the world started seeing pictures of these beautiful, massive buildings rising up out of the ashes and were amazed at how fast this podunk town was able to rebuild. About one hundred stone and brick buildings went up in less than two years, most of them in the Victorian and Romanesque Revival style. So many that it became the largest collection of Romanesque Revival buildings in the world. It made a huge impression, so when the Klondike Gold Rush hit just eight years later in 1897, Seattle was ready and able to capitalize on it. 

The Seattle Chamber of Commerce bought newspaper ads all over the country and people remembered this once tiny lumber town that had burned down and rebuilt almost overnight. Tens of thousands of first-time prospectors flooded into the city and Seattle’s ready merchants sold them everything they could possibly need and then some. 

This drawing shows the Pioneer Building on the right and the Starr-Boyd building on the left. The Pioneer Building was named the Finest Building West of Chicago by the American Institute of Architects when it was completed and the asymmetrical Starr-Boyd was designed for two owners who couldn’t agree on what the building should look like. 

These buildings and a full HALF of the one hundred or so beautiful buildings that went up immediately after the Great Fire were built by the greatest Seattle architect you’ve probably never heard of, Elmer Fisher.

Elmer Fisher

I was sitting on hold in the Duck Nest one day and looking through some books on Seattle. My tour was pretty heavy on the history and light on the goofiness, and based on the reviews I got on Tripadvisor, people either loved it or hated it. I gave the tour I would want because if I ever had to take a duck tour and was told to play along to some ‘YMCA’ bullshit I would demand my money back on the spot. So I was always looking for interesting and ironic stories that would be fun to tell. 

That’s when I discovered Elmer Fisher. It was only a couple paragraphs in some book of odd facts about the State of Washington, I think, but it was all I needed. I did a little research online and printed something out that I taped to the front page of my newspaper just as I got called down to run a tour. I practiced what I was gonna say on the ride down to the ticket booth and contemplated pulling over on one of the side streets off First Avenue because my Pioneer Square history was too heavy as it was. I was already driving too slow and purposely hitting the lights for more time, giving my guests more history than they could ever hope to retain and locals yet another reason to hate us. 

I always went as far South as I could before turning into Pioneer Square to give me more time but since I was now gonna pull over for five minutes I decided to pull onto Main Street, right in the heart of the old neighborhood. Turned out that this was a perfect place to sit and shove some facts and stories down the throats of my paying tourists.

On the first tour of my new route I stopped at a place where other drivers could get around me, cut the engine and set the brake. As I was getting out of my chair to deliver my new presentation of the history of Seattle, I noticed something cool. 

You see that wall there, behind that dumpster? I made a quick look to the other side of the street to see if there was something else to talk about in case on the next tour there might be a homeless person taking a dump there. You see how there’s kind of an arch in the bricks right there above the pavement? See how it’s just like the arch over the first floor window? What’s that all about, right? Everybody seemed interested, so far.

It’s because that first floor window was originally the second floor window and that partially submerged arch below it used to be over what was the actual first floor window! I then went into the whole story about how Seattle was built on a tidal flat between a forest of old growth trees and a deep water port to ship out all that lumber. But the place was kind of a dump. It would flood out every time there was a high tide and the sewer lines would back up into people’s houses.

So when the city burned to the ground in 1889, the business and civic leaders got together and decided to rebuild the city and this time they were gonna do it right. They agreed they would raise the city and build a seawall to keep the water out and make all the new buildings out of brick, stone and steel. No more wood. They had money now because they were a lumber town and San Francisco, Seattle’s biggest customer, kept burning down because they kept rebuilding out of wood. Seattle even formed a Building and Loan they named Washington Mutual to help finance the whole thing.

Since I was turned around and facing my guests, I could read their interest level. They were looking at me and smiling so I would continue with the long version. If they had quackers in their mouths or were talking to each other, they would have gotten the short version.

"Where we’re sitting right now used to be about ten or fifteen feet lower. So what they did was come up with some rules about how all these new buildings were gonna be built. First rule- no more wood! San Francisco can keep burning down if they want but this was gonna be Seattle’s last fire so all new buildings must be made out of brick, stone and steel. 

"Second rule was that all these new buildings must have a storefront on the second story ‘cause the plan was that they would build all these new buildings and then the city would raise the streets ten or fifteen feet to the height of the second floors. Then they would build sidewalks from the new elevated streets to the new second floors. Problem solved!

"Well, the buildings went up fast. Amazingly fast. About one hundred buildings in less than a year and a half, which is amazing, considering how beautiful they are. And the streets went up fast, too. Once the buildings were up the City came in and they put a ten to fifteen foot wall on one side of the original street, same thing on the other side, filled in between with dirt, and then laid cobblestones on top and Boom!, instant elevated street. 

The problem was the sidewalks. They never really hashed out who was gonna pay for the sidewalks, the business owners or the City, so for years there were no sidewalks. If you wanted to cross the street you had to climb a twenty foot ladder, walk across this new elevated street, and then down another twenty foot ladder. Nobody died in the fire but something like seventeen people died from falling off the new roads or from walking on the original sidewalks and having a horse and carriage fall off the new road and kill ’em. It was crazy!

Depending on how interested they looked, I’d go into the Underground and Beneath the Streets tours and other things to see in Pioneer Square. And then it was time to try out my new favorite topic- Elmer Fisher. 

You see that big, beautiful building right there, that one with the stone and arches and all that?, I asked, pointing to whatever cool building was closest. "That style of architecture is called Richardsonian Romanesque Revival and it was designed by a guy named Elmer Fisher.

Elmer Fisher was a Scotsman. He was born in Edinburgh and came to the United States as a young man. He worked his way across the country as a carpenter and landed in Seattle just a little bit before the Great Fire in 1889. The very first newspaper that came out had a big ad, right on the front page that said ‘ELMER FISHER, ARCHITECT!!’, and talked about how he went to the finest architectural college and worked in the best architectural firms, I held up my newspaper that I had taped a piece of paper on that said, ‘ELMER FISHER, ARCHITECT!! BLAH BLAH BLAH!!’, as if to prove it.

Elmer got the jobs to design over FIFTY of the hundred or so buildings that went up within a year and a half of the fire. He chose the Romanesque Revival style developed by Henry Richardson of the Chicago School, if you know what that is, and all the other local architects did the same style so it was the largest collection of Romanesque Revival buildings anywhere in the world. And while all the architects are doing two or three buildings and Elmer’s doing over FIFTY! It’s amazing!

At this point I’d get back in my seat, start the engine and crawl up to the intersection and purposely hit the light. See that building across the street there, on the corner?, I asked, pointing to the Romanesque Revival building at the corner of First and Main. That’s also one of Elmer’s! Isn’t it beautiful? And see those stairs in the sidewalk that go down to the original first floor? They go down to a coffee shop that was the inspiration for that TV show Frasier. Anybody know the name of that coffee shop?"

If somebody yelled, ‘Cafe Nervosa!’, I’d slow down and block traffic so they could get a picture. I could expect about thirty to forty dollars in tips per tour and that was an added five bucks from at least one middle aged couple. I learned later that it wasn't actually one of Elmer’s buildings but in all fairness, of the fifty buildings that Elmer built in Pioneer Square, there are only about a dozen left and you could only see half of them on our route.

As I turned onto First Avenue I realized the timing was perfect and I ended up doing this exact tribute to Elmer probably another two thousand times. See that gray building there? That’s one of Elmer’s! (It wasn’t.) And this one here! How cool is this building with all the rusticated stone? (I had just learned the term ‘rusticated stone’ and was starting to show off.) 

By now I was randomly pointing at every cool looking building with rusticated stone. Elmer designed this building and that building and not only did he design all these buildings, but he also oversaw their construction! Imagine designing and overseeing the construction of FIFTY buildings in just a year and a half!, I said, slowly rolling up First. As we got to the intersection of First and Yesler I was relieved to not be talking about Skid Road and happy to be drawing people’s attention to something that actually matters. 

I made sure to catch the light because there was so much to talk about here. These two buildings on our left are Elmer’s (true), and the one across the street with the toy store in it (actually also one of Elmer’s, it turns out). And on the other side see that god awful parking garage there? They call it the Sinking Ship. Well, it used to be the Hotel Seattle, and it was considered the finest hotel on the West Coast when it was built. It was a flatiron and a very high-end hotel. It fell into disrepair in the fifties and they tore it down in the early sixties, which pissed off so many people they formed a Preservation District to save the rest of the buildings.That’s another one of Elmer’s. (Not really, but they got the point.)

I inched through the intersection and stopped in front of the plaza that’s the official center of Pioneer Square. I didn’t have time to talk about the pergola or the totem pole because motorists are touchy enough as it is. 

Okay, get your cameras out, people! People need to be told what’s picture-worthy, I found. That right there is the Pioneer Building! Pretty amazing, right? It’s the most beautiful building in Seattle, and who made it?

ELMER FISHER!, they yelled.

"Damn right he did! And when it was done it was named the Finest Building West of Chicago by the American Institute of Architects. It’s my favorite building in Seattle, get a good picture!

Elmer Fisher designed and oversaw the construction of at least FIFTY buildings that all went up in less than two years! Well, they looked into it a couple years after he died and discovered that Elmer Fisher wasn’t from Scotland, never went to college, and never worked for any architectural firms. He just read a lot of books and looked at pictures in magazines! And he created the Finest Building West of Chicago! Yaaay!!! There’s a lesson in there somewhere, kids, but I’ll let you and your parents figure that one out.

I quit Ride the Ducks when they told me to tone down the history and start doing some quacking games because some people, apparently, just wanted to drive around Seattle like a bunch of idiots quacking at people on the sidewalk like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever done. And some of these same people complained that they were told they had to buy a Wacky Quacker for $2.50 because we were gonna be doing ‘Quacking Games’ and they wouldn’t want to be left out. And then they'd get on my Duck and part of my intro would be how much I hated those quackers and to put them away, because they’re souvenirs, and you know what you do with a souvenir? YOU PUT IT IN YOUR POCKET TIL YOU GET HOME!!!, I would yell. I had a  great tour and there was no way I was gonna share it with a fucking plastic novelty toy.

But I never forgot about Elmer Fisher and over the years I’ve searched for any information about him that I could find, which has always been frustratingly sparse. I’m convinced he was bipolar, and